English 365: 19th-Century British Literature

Midterm Examination - Fall 1998


Part I: Objective, short answer questions. 5 points each

1. Name the four general categories of poems we have studied thus far in the course.

2. In "Tintern Abbey," we understand toward the end that someone is present with Wordsworth at the time he is "talking through" the poem. Who is that person? (Full name, please).

3. In 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge published a volume of poems jointly, though anonymously. What was the title of that collection?

4. What was William Blake's principal professional field?

5. Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the few major Romantic writers to attend Oxford University. How did he do there?

6. What specific historical event is most associated with 14 July 1789? In what city did that event occur?

7. In English, sonnets usually are divided into two categories on the basis of the division of lines and the distinctive rhyme schemes these different kinds of sonnets employ. Name these two main categories.

8. In addition to novels and longer poems, Charlotte Turner Smith published a collection of shorter poems that went through many editions in her lifetime. Name that collection.

9. In the middle sections of Wordsworth's "Intimations Ode" there are repeated references to a young child. We now know that Wordsworth had a specific child in mind; who was it?

10. Who is the special friend mentioned repeatedly by Coleridge in "This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison"?

11. What is the name of the innovative printing technique that Blake used to produce the plates for Songs of Innocence and of Experience?

12. Of all the writers we have studied thus far, about which one do we have the least biographical, historical, and critical information?


Part II: Essay questions. 50 points

Choose one of the following questions and write a thoughtful, coherent, and well illustrated essay in response. Cite as much specific textual and historical evidence as possible in formulating your essay. You do not need to quote, of course, but you should be able to recall enough of the texts we have studied to be able to refer to them with some accuracy and specificity. Do your best. Very general essays, full of assertions and opinions that are not backed up by specific textual and logical evidence will receive very little credit.


1. Most of the poets we have studied "use" Nature in their work: Anna Seward does, and so does Charlotte Smith, as do William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. William Blake and Anna Maria Smallpiece also "use" Nature in their poems, although they use it in rather a different fashion. For this essay, choose any three poets and discuss the uses to which they put Nature in their poems. Be s complete as possible, and remember to note any similarities and differences among the poets and their works when it comes to Nature.

2. Although very few of the poems we have studied can really be called explicitly political poems, nevertheless we know that Romantic writing was in fact often - indeed very often - political both in authorial intention and in public reception, and that this writing often examined a broad variety of topics that were directly relevant to real, public, political concerns of those volatile times. Choose at least three poems from among those we have studied and explain how and why we can properly regard those poems as somehow political. In answering this question, you must use at least two different authors.

 


Another Sample Midterm Examination for English 365: Fall 2000


PART I: Short Answers. 2 points each.

1. What is the name usually given to the period of British history defined by the years 1811-1820?

2. Who lived the longest? circle letter

A. William Wordsworth
B. Percy Bysshe Shelley
C. Mary Shelley

3. "January, 1795" illustrates which sort of British political poetry? circle letter

A. Radical
B. Revolutionary
C. Conservative
D. Religious

4. Who is the presumed "listener" within the dramatic logic of "Lines . . .Tintern Abbey"?

5. What is the most obvious characteristic of the sonnet form?

6. Which party was more aligned with a rural constituency during the Romantic period in England? circle letter

A. Whig
B. Tory

7. Two principal myths or literary works inform the themes and structure of Frankenstein. One of them is a Classical myth, the other a Christian literary work. Name them.

8. In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth says that "a poet is a man speaking to ____________________________________________."

9. Who was born first? circle letter

A. William Wordsworth
B. Charlotte Smith
C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

10. With which of the Romantic authors do we most often associate consumption (tuberculosis)?

11. What musical instrument features most prominently in the "Ode to the West Wind"?

12. What poem involves a pleasure dome, a knock on the door, and a damsel with a dulcimer?

13. My father was William Godwin and my mother was Mary Wollstonecraft; my name is ____________________________________

14. Who wrote the poem about

. . . the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought
and rolls through all things.

15. Waterloo: July circle letter

A. 1812
B. 1814
C. 1815
D. 1819

16. One of the two most influential collections of sonnets for English Romanticism was called Elegiac Sonnets. Name the author.

17. King of England, 1760 - 1820:

18. Who wrote "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison?

19. Who wrote "England in 1819"?

20. Who wrote "January 1795"?

21. What is a daemon?


PART II: Essay. 50 points.

Study the following poem carefully. Take your time! Then write an essay in which you discuss why we should consider this to be a "Romantic" poem. That is, how and why is it characteristic of writing we associate with the Romantic period in England? In answering, refer specifically to other literary texts you have read for this course, using them for evidence in support of your opinions and assertions. Finally, discuss also anything about the poem that would incline you to argue that the poem is not "Romantic" in nature, again using specific examples from the assigned reading to support your opinions.


Summer Evening



To tend'rer feeling, and more soft regret,
The pensive soul impulsively inclines,
When summer suns in temper'd glory set,
And Evening in her stole of amber shines;
Then, through the glowing ether's trackless road
The constant spirit on a moon-beam rides
To the familiar, though remote, abode,
Where with one well belov'd the heart resides;
With true affection never thrill'd his breast,
His passion nought of sentiment implies,
Who, mindless of the being, lov'd the best,
Views the meek radiance of the Evening skies;
And when the heav'n with moving softness glows,
With cold indifference creeps to dull repose.